Having a voice in a cities growth should be an easy process in a true democracy. Instead, it can be a confusing and discouraging process, not often resulting in success. Tellous sponsors and leads interdisciplinary teams of students from the University of Washington to use design thinking to boost civic engagement.

Tellous organized and sponsored a multidisciplinary group of students across UW’s arts, design, psychology, and engineering majors to look at the challenge of displacement within vulnerable populations as a result of Seattle’s housing shortage. I lead the students on a 2 month exploration of participatory design and we conducted user research with both the neighborhood dwellers and those experiencing homelessness across Seattle